The Dark Reef

Monday, April 1, 2013

A lot of people have complained that The Dark Reef is too easy. Apparently, you have way too much hair on your chest for sissy little games like mine.

Also, the name is totally wrong, as it is not that dark at all.

Also also, why can you, the third person viewer, see the targeting reticle? That doesn't make any damned sense. You don't see a reticle everywhere just because you have a gun.

Lastly, and this is a big one, the story really, really gets in the way. Too much waiting around in the menus, reading stuff. Just let me go play the game already! Don't coddle me, I'm not a baby, I know ASDF does stuff. I can figure out click to shoot. DUH.

Well I wanted you to know that after some consideration, I have decided to create a test version of the game just for you. And yes, it's free.

So...

The Extremely Dark Reef is exactly like episode 2 of The Dark Reef with a few exceptions.

1) Much harder. SO STOP YOUR BITCHING.

2) No lighting except on your Nautilus, and where appropriate. But the rest of the game IS BLACK.

3) No targeting reticle AT ALL

4) No start or end menus AT ALL

5) No help menu AT ALL

6) NO EXCITING END GAME CINEMATICS.

7) IT'S TOO HARDCORE FOR YOU. So go back to playing tiddlywinks if you're scared now.

Monday, February 11, 2013

The goal here was to ship a *weekly* updated game, and right off the start, I missed by one week.

That's okay though, I'll be caught up in a few days.

I had to refine my asset pipeline a little. What that means is that creating quality 3D (and other) assets normally takes a long time. I don't have a long time. I have a very small amount of time. So I have to have this down to a *science*.

I now have a really, really slick system for adding dialog, waypoints, and general in-game concepts. And I also have a really simple and efficient AI that handles badguy behaviors. Coupled together, you get the really fun dynamic found in Episode 2 of The Dark Reef.

I hope you have as much fun playing it as I have.

This episode is named Novskorad because I swear that's what one level of Apache Strike was called. This is my homage level to that game, which I spent probably a month of my life playing, on my Mac.

If you ever played it, you'll recognize some of the same themes here. They'll show up again in other levels as well, but this one in particular, with the city of storage containers, is a lot like that game in parts.

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

I'm constantly walking a line between what I see as something that might take the user out of the experience and something that is just necessary in a game. This kind of thing (see picture below) is exactly what I mean. Repeating textures. Everywhere. This is a screenshot from the new game Aliens: Colonial Marines. The guys who made this game are not amateurs.

See that shit? But the reality is that you just can't have a million different textures all over the place. At some point, the player's brain says, "close enough, I get it, it's a wall with some lights."

...I just wish my brain would say that.

Because it doesn't. It says, "Look at that crap. Clearly, the gamer will stop playing in disgust."

I always knew Macs' gamma setting was higher than the PC gamma setting.

But I never really thought about it until today, when I realized that my old 'n busted Mac, which I built most of this game on, had a bad video card, too. And that meant that what I saw as 'spooky and a little dark' was just 'extremely dark and boring' to everyone else.

Here's a picture. The one on the right is the machine I built it on.

Yeah... pretty big difference. So I bumped the values up across the board for the game.
I hope everyone loves them.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

The Dark Reef is an action/adventure game set at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

It's comprised of 12 chapters, with around 5 episodes per chapter.

So that's... like 50 levels. Wait, 60.

It's 60 levels. And it's being made in real time by me.

I want to stress that this game is *not* the creation of a team of people. I don't even have an 'art guy'. It's just one guy, me. Chilton Webb. I have a copy of LightWave3D and a copy of Unity3D. And I'm using them to tell a story.